Virgil O. Stamps composed
the famous melody in Dall as one day in 1937 and Luther G. Presley
penned the immortal lyrics at his rural Arkansas home in White
County.

Neither composer nor author had the foggiest notion that their
rousing, inspiring religious song would become a Dixieland standard
- and, 30 years later, the theme song of the New Orleans Saints
football team.

Anyone can sing a few lines of "When the Saints Go Marching
In," or hum a few bars of the melody.
Folks around Searcy are amazed to discover that the man who wrote
the lyrics to the popular song was one of them. Even employees
of a local music store weren't convinced until they were shown
his credits in a song book from a display rack.
Presley's eldest son, Leister Presley of Pangburn, says he thinks
his dad got $5 for writing those lyrics. But that was only the
beginning of royalty checks. A music registration organization
has paid royalties over the years. "Sometimes he'd get maybe
$1,000," Leister recalls. "Every time the song was played
on television or a radio station, they'd send a little check."
A 1944 article in the Arkansas Democrat described Luther Presley
as the state's most prolific songwriter. He composed the music
or wrote the lyrics to hundreds of gospel songs - 1,500 or more,
according to the article. Personal experiences inspired him. Most
of his songs were written at his home just south of Pangburn in
the countryside near Clay and Drake Spur.
Presley's home was listed on a company letterhead as the Arkansas
office of music publisher Stamps-Baxter of Dallas and Chattanooga,
Tenn. He had worked for other music publishing companies before
joining Stamps-Baxter in 1930.
In those days, the company usually put out two song books a year,
and Presley contributed five songs to each of them. Certain pages
in each year's books were reserved for him, Leister says.

ASSEMBLING A LEGACY
Some years later, Leister Presley began searching for songs written
or composed by his father, fearing they might be lost if nobody
collected them. He had seen two old song books stripped of their
covers on an organ at a Pioneer Village display at the White County
Fair. Leafing through the aging pages, he found two of his father's
old songs - one composed in 1916 and the other in 1919.
So far, he has filled seven looseleaf notebooks with his father's
compositions - music and lyrics of 649 songs, the lyrics for more
than 400 others and the music for 25 others.
Leister Presley, a retired construction supervisor, is 85 now.
His collection will go to the University of Central Arkansas where
his wife, Cloie Presley, a county historian, was educated when
the institution was Arkansas State Teachers College.
Leister Presley says his father also edited the gospel hit "The
Great Speckled Bird," made famous by Roy Acuff at the Grand
Ole Opry. (The same music was also used for the popular country
hit, "I Didn't Know God Made Honky Tonk Angels." Which
wasn't unusual in the past.)
Luther Presley was born March 6, 1887, on Beckett Mountain in
Faulkner County, five miles west of Rose Bud. He grew up with
religious music at a Free Will Baptist church. At 14 he attended
his first music school and began directing the church choir. He
wrote his first song, "Gladly Sing," when he was 17.
Known in those days for writing customized poems for $1, he always
carried scraps of paper to write on. Often after a trying experience,
the composer would wander off and write - while sitting under
a tree or standing on a street corner.
One day his brakes locked when he tried to stop for another vehicle
crossing a one-lane bridge over the Little Red River. He had to
scrape up the money to fix the other man's car - no small thing
in those days. But thankful that nobody got hurt, he was inspired
to write, "I Know the Lord Is With Me."
After attending a funeral, he wrote the hymn, "He Wills It
So."
Luther Presley's most famous song may be "When the Saints
Go Marching In," says Leister Presley, but his dad's favorite
song was "I'd Rather Have Jesus" - composed after he
had studied the parable of the rich man in the 12th chapter of
Luke.

AN INSPIRATION
"I'll Have A New Life" was composed one Easter after
he heard a sermon by Dr. D.N. Jackson, a well-known minister in
White County.
Leister Presley says his own favorite among his father's songs
is "Give Them Red Roses (The Boys Will Be Coming Home),"
composed near the end of World War II while he and his brother
Clarence were serving in Europe. "I knew Dad was thinking
about us. Dad wrote three or four songs about soldiers."

Luther Presley responded to his personal losses by composing hymns,
Leister says, as though he knew his faith was being tested.
His wife and second child died in childbirth. He married again
two years later. His second wife, Rena, was known for her fine
singing voice, and together they made many public appearances
promoting his songs. Rena Presley wrote some 40 songs on her own,
including two that were published in recent years.

Luther Presley died in December 1974 [and is buried in St.
Mary's Cemetery at Rose Bud, Arkansas, near Beckett Mountain where he was born] but Rena Henderson Presley continued his work for a
decade - for the Zondervan Co., which had acquired Stamps-Baxter.
She taught piano until she was 90. During an interview two years
later, Rena said she still received orders for song books but
she forwarded them to someone else.